


Lay her i' th' earth

by vivianne_leigh



Category: BioShock
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Dead People, Established Relationship, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Hatred, Medical Trauma, Mental Breakdown, One Shot, Other, Psychological Drama, Revenge, Two-parter, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-01-17 09:52:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivianne_leigh/pseuds/vivianne_leigh
Summary: And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil—By telling the truth. Tell truth and shame the devil.





	1. Chapter 1

i.

He’d thought he was dreaming, the first time it happened.

As the fog of sleep had relinquished its hold on him, he’d became acutely aware of another presence in the room, nonchalantly leaning against the battered door frame. In the heavy darkness, the figures’ face was obscured, cast in a shadow fed by shattered light bulbs and frayed power lines. Something about the voice gave him pause; it lacked the slurred incoherency of the splicers, and yet… that made it worse, somehow. The sound was feminine, unimpeded–even as the city was crumbling to bits around his ears, it retained a gleeful, almost girlish quality.

“Good morning,  _honey_.”

By the time his head cleared enough for confusion and panic to set in, the intruder had gone, slipped out as quietly as they had come.

Finishing getting dressed for the day, he’d almost convinced himself it had never happened- that there had been no figure by the door, no face cloaked by darkness, no strangely bubbly voice wishing him a good morning. Guiding the final button of his double breasted suit into place, he closed his eyes and took a slow, heavy breath through his nose and out his mouth. He was fine . What he had seen back there had been but a mere hiccup, a lone piece of grit in the finely oiled machine of his mind. He would not let it him throw him out of whack. Turning away from the dressing room mirror, he slammed the bedroom door shut and with it, closed out anymore thoughts from the strange waking dream. He had a city to revive.

It had happened again a day or so later, as his stare bored holes into the flickering screens that fed directly to the security cameras scattered throughout the city. On the display, the ragged figures of Atlas’s men scurried around like rats, greasy hands clutched around scuffed pistols or filthy lengths of pipe- and, even from the relative safety of his office, Andrew swore he could smell them, the imagined sickly odors of sweat and fear making his lip curl. After a moment, though, the phantom smell gave way to something else- something sweeter. He found himself thinking of flowers and cocktail parties and the luxuries from before the war. Behind him, the floor creaked softly and he ignored it, confident the security system would have sniffed out any potential dangers. Even as he ignored both, the smell grew stronger, filling the air. Rapture’s quality standards had slipped considerably since the war- if he was going to be jumping at every sigh of the paneling and every odd scent, he’d never finish his important work. He was so sure, in fact, he didn’t turn at the second sound either- until a pale hand stroked the back of his neck, bringing with it a coldness so invasive and absolute his skin broke into gooseflesh.

His heart pounded in his chest and he jerked around, eyes whipping through the room with a frenzied intensity, shaking hand reaching up to touch the affected spot on his neck. Something small fluttered overhead, drawing his eye as it drifted earthward. Disbelieving, he watched through wide eyes as the  feather sunk the to the ground, vibrantly red against the water-damaged floors. Distantly, he noticed that the air had gone back to being sour.

 

ii.

This time, he  _saw_ her.

She was getting bolder, now: he no longer experienced just one lone touch out of the blue- instead it had grown from a trickle of sensations to a torrent, cold hands tangling themselves with his own, icy breath puffing along the nape of his neck in frozen bursts. He knew what he felt, yet denied it- it was just stress, was all. The security cameras had seen nothing, and the turrets stood as silent monoliths, unmoving in the water-swollen corridors.  

That night, easing himself into bed after fighting off waves Atlas’s leeches, a clammy arm curled around his waist, pressing hard into the soft flesh below his ribs.

 

iii.

“Will you stay with me for a while, sweetheart?”

His throat tightened into a swallow, suddenly dry as dust. He knew that voice. It was the same as the first time, yet different- long gone was the perkiness of that first morning ( of before) . Somehow the voice was sicker ; labored, with wet-sounding respiration feeling unpleasantly heavy against his neck. The breathing bubbled noisily as the figure let out a long exhale in his ear, sighing as they pulled even closer. His skin crawled at the touch- it was both slick and leathery, like raw meat just going bad. Resisting the instinct to flinch, he instead bit his tongue until fat beads of blood swelled in his mouth, then exhaled slowly through his nose. A single name pushed its way out of his still-dry throat: it was both a question and confirmation, all at once.

“Jasmine.”

The arm under him retreated and a new pressure appeared, digging into his side- the pressure of elbows resting on him and slowly, like the moon during an eclipse, her pale face drifted, grinning, into his line of sight. Even in the gloom he could make out the hairline trickle of dried blood that ran from her scalp, see the way the blunt force he’d used had chipped her teeth. She smiled, showing a mouth painted dark with fresh blood.

“Andrew.”

Then unconsciousness swept him up in its grip, burying him in a blackness so thorough it felt like being entombed.

 

iv.

“Honey!”

Everywhere he went, she followed, drifting behind like an afterthought. Hallucination or not, Ryan found her hard to look at, especially for too long- she had bore the brunt of his anger in her final moments of life and it showed ; though, he had reminded himself, she had brought it on herself by selling their (his) heir.

(The thought hadn’t done much for him the first time, but he had no other justification to offer himself, so he kept applying it to his rising guilt and disgust- reusing a bandage that had long become soiled out of sheer desperation.)

She never leaves anymore, he thought, and frowned. He ignored her voice, instead re-rolling his sleeves as he carefully adjusted the fraying wires on a damaged security monitor, watching with ill-concealed frustration as the damaged metal only sparked weakly.

“Sweetheart.” She was closer now, slim feet barely brushing the floor, radiating cold like a busted thermostat. In a moment she would touch him. Raising his shoulders defensively, Andrew spun to meet her, not bothering to wipe the sneer off his face. Death did not become her, he thought distantly to himself, almost amused at the odd thought. Even floating, she was smaller then he- she compensated by drifting closer to his face, breath cool against his face. It smelled sickly-sweet to him, bringing to mind the sugary stench of rotten fruit. Both of her eyes were darkened with tear-smudged makeup, but only one was accented with a vividly swelling black eye, glistening shinily in the flickering light. Realizing his attention was finally on her, she lowered her eyes teasingly and smiled, a wicked grin crowned with chipped and broken teeth.

“Dear  _lover_.”

“What is it, Jasmine.”

He’d long given up on ignoring her- she was leagues above the splicers in terms of coherency, and at the very least her trains of thought stayed on track. Real or no, Andrew was willing to use her as a distraction, if only to keep himself sane for the greater task at hand.

“The light here makes you look pale,” Before he could reply, she charged on, voice laden with fake concern as she twisted her mouth into a pout.

 “…A little washed out.” Spreading her arms out, she drifted higher, hands splayed for emphasis. Her pointer and ring finger dangled oddly on one hand, swinging jerkily as she moved. On every other finger on her hands, the nails were ripped to the quick, and the blood seeping from the nail beds mingled with the ruby polish almost seamlessly. Defensive wounds, he thought, and when he noticed them for the first time, a memory of pain raked across his face and arms like sudden lightning, mingled with a woman’s frightened sobs.

“And all this saltwater is far from complimenting that cologne.” In a parody of a ballerina, she posed on one foot and gave a twirl. On the back of her head, he noticed, there was by a massive smear of dried blood, tangling her hair together where it had solidified into an enormous smear. It did, Andrew realized, strike him as looking almost like a kind of terrible second mouth, and the thought sent a uncontrollable shiver up his spine. Finishing her pirouette, Jasmine winked at him and continued, unfazed by her gaping wounds.

“Not to mention, these tiles makes your shoes look cheap.” Pulling closer again, she cupped her freezing hands around his face and cooed, eyes hooded and bloodshot and barely concealing the burning hate in her eyes. 

“Andy, honey…You look tired. Maybe I can help,” she breathed into his ear, holding him in a grip like steel. “If you’d  _just_ follow me. You can try to time stamp our love, expiration-date us… but, take your time. I’ll wait for you.”

Before he could pull away, she surged closer and kissed him, opened-mouthed and greedy.

His stomach roiled from the unwanted contact and a taste like raw meat invaded his mouth before he pulled away, already gagging in disgust. Satisfied, she released him and backed off, watching perverse delight as he staggered away.

Scrubbing his mouth, Andrew looked back toward at her for answers, but the hall was empty again, save for him and the rhythmic dripping of leaky pipes.


	2. Chapter 2

v.

He’d tried to get rid of her once- and only once. She’d grabbed his shoulders tight enough to bruise and leaned in close, ruined face clouding over with fury, before speaking in a tone so _ugly_ it made his heart pound. “Listen to me, you **stupid** man. I am _not_ going anywhere. This city and I are dead, and soon... you’ll be too. We’ll waste away together.”

She dropped her hands and stalked off, a smear of red against the green-blue of the city. He’d watched her leave, something like bile swilling up his throat.

Late that night, as he’d finally forced himself to rest, an errant thought had come on him, as violent and unwanted as an assault. Maybe Rapture _was_ already dead, as Jasmine had said, and he was one of the ghosts, too lost in pursuit of a now-useless goals to truly see his situation. The concept sent a pulse of fear up his spine, and fitfully he rolled onto his side, trying to distance himself from the thought.

As if reading his mind, Jasmine smiled from her perch at the end of the bed, where’d she’d taken to watching him sleep, drinking in the rise and fall motion of his chest. Wreathed in shadow, the only part of her Ryan could clearly see was that awful smile, teeth washed orange in swallowed blood.

 

vi.

He was becoming used to her. She clung to him like a shadow, making snide comments and uttering ugly threats, laughing at his failure and rubbing it in his face whenever she could. It was a rough life, but he could survive, splicers and visions of dead women aside, as long as it was predictable. And it was, for a time.

It was, until it wasn’t.

 

vii.

A young man had breached the city, pushing- no, _crashing-_ through Rapture. The sight of the stranger filled him with a rage so all-encompassing, so _overwhelming_ that his hands trembled as he spoke into the PA, addressing the intruder -this _rapist_ of his fair city- with a voice of steel.

“So tell me, friend, which one of the _bitches_ sent you? The KGB wolf, or the CIA jackal?” Jasmine rolled her eyes at him, hovering over the warped floors, but he ignored her, pushing on. “Here's the news: Rapture isn't some sunken ship for you to plunder, and Andrew Ryan isn't a giddy socialite who can be slapped around by government muscle. And with that, farewell, or _dasvidaniya_ , whichever you prefer.”

Oddly quiet, Jasmine watched the figure on the flickering screens, bruised face unreadable.

 

vii.

He had _failed_.

Andrew Ryan, who had outrun the Russian forces by the skin of his teeth, built himself an empire from next to nothing, who held the very keys to the city in his _hands_ \- had failed. The stranger had defeated his forces, outwitted his security system, empowered his enemies and now- the final insult _-_ was making his way to Andrew’s office. Taking a slow inhale, his mind turned towards the self-destruct trigger in the next room, but he instead turned and sat at his desk. He straightened his shoulders and laced his fingers, staring wordlessly at the genetic key resting on the wood.

It would _not_ end like this

Hardly a minute later, the key had clicked home and the first cataclysmic rumbles began shaking the foundations of the city.

 

vi.

“You know, Ryan...”

Jasmine’s voice shattered the tense silence from where she lay, echoing around her as she flopped out across a large pipe that stretched overhead. Ryan didn’t look up, didn’t tear his eyes from the monitors- if the bitch wanted to talk, she could talk, but he was under no obligation to respond. Twirling his 9-iron between his fingers, Andrew kicked a lone golf ball from underfoot and turned to squint at the figure moving across the flickering screen. Outside the strange young man was still prowling, Big Daddy boots rattling with every step he took across the floor of Rapture Central Control. His arms and chest were splattered with gore and dirt, and the sweater he had arrived in was thoroughly in tatters. The pounding of his footsteps was a grotesque sound, somehow audible over the dull roaring of Rapture dying. They struck Ryan as the footfalls of a malicious giant, a monster from his childhood- a _balachko_ made real. With that unsettling thought, something in him shifted, and for the first time in decades Andrew Ryan felt a stab of raw terror pierce his confidence.

He didn’t hear anything else from Jasmine, didn’t see her abandon her perch, but that smell -the damnable stench of wilting flowers and spoiled fruit- washed over him, and he felt, rather then saw her at his shoulder.

“Ryan.”

A little shaken by his situation, he turned to look at her, face a carefully composed mask as the young stranger continued his implacable search outside.

“Yes?”

She blinked at him slowly, the corner of her mouth curling into the barest suggestion of a smile. Even with the blood and bruises littering her face, her eyes were still that charmingly distinctive gunmetal blue. But as he studied her her expression suddenly became unreadable, detatched.

“It’s almost time, you know.”

“You know I can’t accept that, Jasmine.” Hoping for a diversion, he lifted the golf club and tested his swing, still making sure his face was deliberately blank.

“That doesn’t change anything.” Catching his eye again, she let her feet touch the ground and stared up at him, exactly as she had in life.

“Maybe not.” As he spoke, he noticed she seemed to be changing- the blood was fading and her bruises were lightening even as they regarded each other. From the other side of the thick double doors of his office, a heavy thump was heard, and both Jasmine and Ryan turned to look. After a beat she turned back to him, nodding once slowly.

“He’s here. You’ve failed, Ryan. All your scheming, the secrecy... it was for nothing.” Almost casually, she pulled away and drifted towards the twin brass Earth statues that stood guard in the corner closest to the door. Uncharacteristically silent, Andrew watched as she daintily settled onto one and put her feet up on the other, the last of the blood vanishing from her skin as her torn stockings began to mend themselves almost invisibly. “I don’t even know how I _ever_ loved you.” Outside, there was another thump, this one louder and closer. Torn, Andrew rapidly flicked his gaze between the doors, the monitors, and Jasmine, who had since closed her eyes and leaned against the wall and was slouching as if exhausted. Without opening her eyes she continued:

“You know what happens next, Ryan. But you know what else?”

Disgusted at his own fear, Ryan looked down and distracted himself by carefully placing the golf ball back on its tee, making a show of setting up the tiny green. Part of him refused to yield to her manipulations, and as a small victory he kept his feet firmly planted, staring out the glass pane even as it fogged over with humidity. “ _What_ do I know, Jasmine.” His voice came out flat, scathing.

“You did one thing right.” Her matted, bloody hair was slowly coiling back into healthy gold waves, and when she spoke he could see her teeth were no longer chipped or slick with blood. Faintly, he saw that she seemed to be fading away slowly, like an overexposed photo.

“Did I?” He could see deepest of the shadows behind her, though her torso and corset. 

“Mhm. You know how?” She had become ever fainter, now. Her injuries had vanished and she was beautiful again, dramatic streaks of rouge giving her an almost flirty look.

“How?”

Footsteps, outside. Those same heavy footfalls mere meters away.

She let out an awed, breathless chuckle and tilted her head in his direction, leaning closer and flicking her eyes towards the sealed doors before dreamily regarding him, even as she faded slowy from sight.

“You showed me my _son._ ”

With that, she flickered from the office completely, and alone again, Andrew Ryan watched the main doors slide open as a long shadow fell across the floor.


End file.
